Anointment of Unilever’s Clift signals power shift for marketers

The news that Simon Clift’s role as Unilever’s chief marketing officer is being elevated, with him reporting directly to chief executive Patrick Cescau (MW last week), is seen by many in the industry as a shift in emphasis that gives marketing greater corporate significance, as well as a personal triumph for Clift himself.

Though Unilever denies Clift’s advancement means his colleague Keith Weed, vice-president of homecare (and now oral care and water), is being sidelined – a spokesman says “It’s not really a case of winning or losing” – few would deny that Clift’s direct access to Cescau gives him a level of stature which outweighs that of Weed, his former boss.

Unilever says the idea behind the elevation of Clift’s role is to give him the scope to transfer the success he has overseen in personal care brands, such as Dove and Lynx/Axe, and “make that happen” in other areas, particularly across Unilever’s food portfolio.

Clift is widely viewed as an unconventional and daring marketer and his appointment of the then unproven Bartle Bogle Hegarty in 1995 to handle Lynx when he was UK marketing director is seen as a defining moment in his career.

BBH chairman Jim Carroll, who has worked with Clift for more than a decade, says of him/ “He absolutely loves creative work and inspires agencies with confidence. I think he gets great performances out of agencies because they want to deliver against his high standards.” Carroll describes Clift as being “sharp, funny, very intelligent and quite sharp-tongued”.

Clift began his career at Unilever in 1982, joining as a management trainee in marketing at UK personal care company Elida Gibbs, after studying modern and medieval languages at Cambridge. He spent the next decade in various European marketing roles before becoming marketing director of Unilever Mexico in 1991.

He returned to London in 1994 as marketing director of renamed Elida Fabergé UK. In 1997, Clift moved to São Paulo as managing director of Elida Gibbs Brazil, Unilever’s second-largest personal care business, and in 2000 became chairman of Unilever’s Latin American personal care category.

Latin love

It seems that Clift has a particular affinity for Brazil and although he was brought back to the UK in 2001 to head marketing for Unilever’s global home and personal care division, he still keeps a home in South America.

He is an ardent Chelsea fan and his time in Brazil no doubt helped contribute to his “encyclopaedic” knowledge of the game there.

Though some observers view Clift as “a bit of an agency schmoozer” – even Carroll says he “enjoys the full gamut of agency entertainments” – he inspires great loyalty in his agencies.

Lowe creative director Fernando Vega-Olmas, who oversees Lowe’s worldwide creative work for Unilever and has also worked with Clift for more than ten years, says: “He is the best client I have ever had. He is fearless and an endless source of inspiration.”

Courageous approach

Clift has said that it is not barriers at the top of the company that get in the way of creating great advertising; that it is about courage, starting from the bottom. Vega-Olmas believes Clift will become a father-like figure to a new generation of Unilever marketers as he attempts to work his marketing magic across the whole of Unilever.